Wednesday, July 26, 2006

This is posted on behalf of Catrin Williams:--University of Wales Bangor

PhD Studentship: New Testament Studies

School of Theology and Religious Studies

The School of Theology and Religious Studies is offering a PhD studentship in New Testament Studies to commence on 1st October 2006. The studentship will cover the cost of University tuition fees (at the Home/EU rate of £3168 for 2006/7) and will provide a maintenance grant of £12000 per year for a maximum of three years of full-time study. The successful candidate will be required to undertake some New Testament teaching for the School as a condition of his/her award.

The School of Theology and Religious Studies is part of the University’s College of Arts and Humanities (which comprises the Schools of Welsh, English, History, Linguistics, Modern Languages, Music, and Creative Industries). The School has nine full-time academic members of staff who teach and research in a wide variety of areas: Old Testament, New Testament, Biblical Hermeneutics, Modern Church History, Empirical Theology, Theology and Contemporary Culture, Pentecostal Theology. Details of the research interests of individual members of staff, and of the undergraduate and postgraduate courses offered by the School, can be found at http://www.bangor.ac.uk/trs. The work of the successful applicant will be supervised by Dr Catrin Williams, whose research interests include the Gospel of John, late Second Temple Judaism, rabbinic and targumic traditions.

The successful applicant will:

· Have a good first degree in a relevant field and a postgraduate qualification or further relevant academic experience.

· Demonstrate the capability and diligence required to complete a PhD by research within the period of the award.

· Provide a clear statement of his/her proposed research topic in the field of New Testament Studies; he/she will be expected to offer an outline of the questions or problems to be addressed, and of the methods to be used, in the thesis.

· Have fluent English and an excellent knowledge of New Testament Greek. A reading knowledge of German is desirable.

· Be in a position to undertake teaching duties for the School, including New Testament Greek at Level 1 and New Testament Greek Texts at Levels 2 and 3.

Applicants should send a CV, the names and addresses of two referees familiar with their academic work, and a statement (max. 1000 words) outlining their proposed research topic to: Dr Eryl W. Davies, Head of the School of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG (email: rss013@bangor.ac.uk; tel. 01248 382079).

The closing date for applications is 21 August, and we aim to inform our selected candidate by 1 September. The School may decide to interview candidates for this studentship as part of its selection process.

The University of Groningen is the second oldest in The Netherlands and was established in 1614. The teaching programmes offered by the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies have been assessed as the best in the Netherlands (2006). Its research is deemed excellent, according to the latest review (2006). The principal research areas of the Faculty are: Jewish and Christian Traditions, Religion, Representation and Power and Meaning, Tradition and Change. There is a great deal ofinterdisciplinary research.

University Lecturer in New Testament & Early Christian Studies

vacancynumber: 206150

Job description

The Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies seeks applications for a University Lecturer in New Testament & Early Christian Studies in the Department of Biblical Studies from 1 January 2007, or as soon as possible thereafter. The candidate appointed will be responsible for teaching New Testament & Early Christianity in the BA and MA programmes. His or her research will be in the field of New Testament & Early Christian Studies with a required specialism in: the Jewish context, heterodox early-Christian movements (e.g. Gnostic) and/or Patristics.

Requirements

- PhD in relevant field;

- a dynamic and enthusiastic approach to his/her subject area;

- knowledge of innovative and pioneering research on the New Testament & Early Christianity in its ancient context;

- a demonstrable interest in interdisciplinary co-operation;

- excellent research skills, shown among other things by articles in leading academic journals or international publications;

- the ability to successfully compete for external research funding.

- excellent teaching skills;

- the capacity to contribute to BA and MA programmes in both theology and religious studies;

- the capacity to collaborate actively with the other members of Biblical Studies within the yearly Themes in Biblical Narrative conferences, the proceedings of which are published in the Brill series (www.xs4all.nl/~fvds/tbn);

- The willingness to participate actively in the producing of the /Review of Articles /of the /Journal for the Study of Judaism/, which is issued by the Qumran Institute of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen;

Conditions of employment

The University of Groningen offers a salary, dependent on qualifications and work experience, of € 3024,- (scale 11) up to a maximum of € 4705,- (scale 12) gross per month for a full-time position, and 8% holiday allowance. The appointment will be on temporary basis for 1 year (probationary period) with the possibility of a permanentposition after the first year.

Further information

Informal enquiries may be made to Professor George van Kooten (E-mail: g.h.van.kooten@rug.nl). Further informationabout the department and faculty are available via the faculty's website at: www.rug.nl/theology.

Application

Candidates whose main teaching and research experience is in any area relevant to the teaching and study of New Testament & Early Christianity are encouraged to apply.

You can apply for this job before 15 September 2006 by sending your application to:

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

I interrupt my blogging holiday to note that while driving from Birmingham to South Derbyshire yesterday, it was a pleasure to catch my friend Bridget Gilfillan Upton on the latest Beyond Belief on Radio 4. (It's great being in the UK -- you can get Radio 4 just by switching on the radio in the car! You don't even have to have your laptop and an internet connection!). You can listen again here:

As well as Bridget Gilfillan Upton, there was a second woman whose name I have forgotten (sorry) and also Timothy Freke, whom I've met on a couple of occasions, most recently on a previous episode of Beyond Belief on Gnosticism.

Monday, July 10, 2006

One of the things mentioned in the Biblical Studies Bulletin 40 (see previous post) is the most recent Tyndale Tech from David Instone Brewer. A quick search shows that I have not blogged this previously, and it's certainly worth doing so:

The latest Biblical Studies Bulletin, for June 2006, is now available on-line. It's edited by Michael Thompson at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and is connected with Grove Books, and is always worth reading:

This is your opportunity to stand up and be counted! For ten years now I have spent roughly four days per year editing BSB. My boss and others are urging me to simplify my lifestyle. One way to do so would be to give up BSB. But would anyone miss it? If you think the tradition is worth continuing, please send a postcard or an email to me (mbt2@cam.ac.uk). If I hear from thirty righteous people (not including Grove employees, group members, or Ridley Hall staff or students), before the next issue is due, I’ll keep doing this for a while. Otherwise, it’s the eschaton.

Here's my vote: please keep it going, Mike, if you can. I'd like to delay the eschaton.

By the way, the link on the main page to BSB 40 points to BSB 39, but I managed to sniff out the actual link.

Frank Deasy, one of the writers of Prime Suspect, will pen the BBC’s new £4 million drama The Passion, which is understood to be scheduled for 2008.

The mini-series will follow the week leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Producer Nigel-Stafford Clark, who recently worked on the Corporation’s award-winning adaptation of Bleak House, told MediaGuardian that he had selected Deasy because he had an instinctive understanding of the task.

It is reported that the format will take the same soap opera scheduling approach as Bleak House - in half hour episodes each night.

The production, which was the brainchild of the BBC religion department, will also see input from new head of religion and ethics, Michael Wakelin, while Mark Goodacre, a British academic expert on Jesus, has also been engaged as a consultant.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Some recent discussion on Synoptic-L led me to nibble around in some earlier twentieth century British Synoptic scholarship. The specific thing we were discussing was the reception of the Q scepticism of E. W. Lummis, whose How Luke was Written (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915) anticipated Austin Farrer's On Dispensing with Q by some forty years. B. H. Streeter does not mention Lummis in The Four Gospels, in spite of the fact that he had earlier reviewed the book for the Journal of Theological Studies 17 (1915–1916): 125. Vincent Taylor does mention Lummis on several occasions, but he groups him together with Matthean priorist H. G. Jameson, The Origin of the Synoptic Gospels (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1922), and one is easily thrown off the scent, as I once was. See, for example, Vincent Taylor, The Synoptic Gospels, and Some Recent British Criticism, The Journal of Religion, Vol. 8, No. 2. (Apr., 1928): 225-246 (228). Others make the same mistake, e.g. Peter Head, Christology and the Synoptic Problem: An Argument for Markan Priority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 17 and Edward C. Hobbs, A Quarter-Century Without "Q", 11 n. 4.

Now what was new to me was a reference in the above mentioned Vincent Taylor article to the effect that "Mr Lummis has recently defended his theory in the Hibbert Journal (July, 1925)" (228, n. 12). My good friend and fellow Q sceptic Jeff Peterson has kindly supplied me with a copy of the hitherto unknown (to us) article from the Hibbert Journal and it turns out that it has a great title and some very interesting content. Bibliographical details are:

It is my intention to make the article available on-line, on the assumption that it is now out of copyright (though I'll check), as I earlier made Farrer's and other Q sceptics' articles available on-line on my Case Against Q website. In the mean time, here are some choice quotations, with thanks to Jeff Peterson for transcribing:

"Many (if not most) theologians are unable to appreciate the law of probability. They are often, in fact, indignant at the introduction of such a peremptory thing as a mathematical argument into their guessing-game. A rigid measure ought not, they maintain, to be applied to an elastic material. But the value of the mathematical check is that it defines the degree of elasticity in the material. It disposes of the contention 'Since this material is elastic, we may stretch it as far as we please.'" (759)

"This imaginary document [Q] will not do the work for which it was invented unless it accounts for the non-Marcan community of Luke and Matthew in the Baptism, the Temptation, and certain other passages to which Mark presents a parallel. But when the common non-Marcan passages are detached it as at once to be seen that they cannot have stood in any document without connecting links, and the links which are logically required are precisely those which appear in due place in Matthew and Luke. These links, however, appear also in Mark. Hence it is held that Mark was acquainted with 'Q,' and that in these places his work represents a 'mutilation' or abridgement of 'Q.' . . . Now it can also be shown beyond reasonable doubt that the passage which occurs in Matthew iv.23–25 was made use of by Luke in his paraphrase of certain Marcan notices; and also that this passage is, in Matthew, a summary of those same Marcan notices. If 'Q' is to work, this passage, since it was known both to Matthew and to Luke, and is non-Marcan, must have appeared in 'Q.' That is to say, 'Q' must have contained a synopsis of certain consecutive passages in Mark. We obtain the curious result that Mark was familiar with 'Q,' and 'Q' was skillfuly avoided in Mark's supplementary work; but this supplementary work of Mark was at the same time a basis for a passage in 'Q.' One is reminded of Baron Munchausen sitting on his horse whle he lifts it by its ears out of the bog. The 'Q' hypothesis lands in an absurdity." (761)

"My grudge against 'Q' is this, that it inaugurated a vicious fashion in New Testament scholarship. Instead of obeying the tenor of facts that lay before them, scholars have taken to calling up imaginary documents out of the unknown. There is not the slightest scrap of evidence for 'Q,' or for 'Corrected Mark,' or for Dr Stanton's 'other documents' which served as sources both for Matthew and for Luke, or for such special selective assimilation sa he posits in the ancestral manuscripts of the New Testament. Such facile fabrications, invented to evade the clear suggestion of the actual texts as we have them, are a sin against learning. Nor can I understand the grounds of the obstinate refusal of divines to admit—in face of overwhelming evidence—that Luke was acquainted with Matthew." (761-2)

Composer Geoffrey Burgon reveals how he wrote a traditional, serious score to counteract the comedy in a controversial film. Director Terry Jones admits that he was surprised that the song Always Look on the Bright Side became such a hit.

There are several contributions from me in both programmes. The last part, on The Last Temptation of Christ, is broadcast tomorrow.

Composer Stephen Schwartz reveals that he took five weeks to write the classic songs such as Day By Day. Another song, Beautiful City, became the unofficial anthem of the World Trade Centre disaster, and virtually all the words in Godspell are derived from the New Testament.

There is a bit more of me in there. I sound quite chirpy; I do remember enjoying the interview, as it happens.

As regular readers will know, I am a big fan of the Biblical Studies Carnivals -- they are an ideal way of catching up on the latest in the ever-expanding biblioblogosphere and we are all greatly in the debt of those like Chip Hardy who have done great jobs. Indeed this month I've been pleased to discover Chip Hardy's Daily Hebrew blog, which is new to me and which I have added to my blogroll (though it has about 4,000 different RSS feeds and I don't know if I've got a good one). But I want to add a point this month of (mild) criticism and (stronger) confession. The point of criticism is that I think there is a possible danger that the Biblical Studies Carnivals are over-dependent on the submissions made by individual bloggers. I say this because I think there are some great blog posts that are getting missed, indeed entire blogs that never get mentioned. And this is where I want to add my point of stronger self-criticism and confession: I have never yet submitted anything to any of the Carnivals. I often talk about them and always advertise them, but somehow I never get round to submitting anything. I know that in my own case it's a certain self-effacing shyness at submitting anything I've written. In the case of recommending other people's blogs, it's sheer laziness. I just don't get round to doing it.

So this is partly a memo to self: in future make more of an effort to submit materials. And it is partly a call to others: do try to keep the Carnivals strong by submitting your favourite materials, especially in others' blogs. I think this is important as the blogosphere continues to expand because we will not always be able to rely on the time and ability of those like Chip Hardy who are putting good carnival posts together.

Though the star's profound Christian faith is known to fans of his music, people who know Mr. Cash through the 2005 biopic " Walk the Line" will be forgiven for not understanding the extent to which themes of sin and forgiveness, prayers to God and references to prophecy inform not only in his lyrics but in his posture and tone. Like much of his recent work, the songs written and covered by Mr. Cash exhibit a tension between the wrathful God of the Bible's Old Testament and the forgiving son of God in the New Testament.

It's a shame that so blatant a piece of Marcionism is stated as if a self-evident truth, and it's another good reason why education about Biblical Studies and early Christian history is good for you.

One Duke family that still has a rooting interest in the outcome is the Goodacres, who emigrated from Birmingham, England, last September. Mark Goodacre, an associate professor of religion, and his wife Viola are blogging about their experiences in America (http://uktous.blogspot.com), but also commenting about the games, the quality of the broadcasters and other World Cup-related topics.

For example, Viola recently wrote that she remains concerned about her favorite team, even though the English team has advanced to the quarter-finals: “As for England, we finished top of our group. Even so, during each of their matches, I couldn't help thinking that they needed someone to light a fire under them to get them going.”

Ah, that already seems like a long time ago now, and no one ever got around to lighting that fire.

The series is produced and directed by Jean-Claude Bragard, with whom I once appeared on Channel 4's The Big Breakfast. As Matt notes, he was behind the successful series Son of God (Jesus: The Complete Story in the US). He also directed St Paul and several other key BBC Religion and Ethics programme. I've been asked in correspondence if I was involved with The Miracles of Jesus and the answer is: yes, but only unofficially. I spent some time with Jean-Claude and with Anna Cox discussing the series a couple of years ago in Birmingham, and have had extended phone calls and email correspondence with them since then, and with series researchers, especially David Waters. I was also a reader for the series book by Michael Symmons Roberts (picture left). On this occasion I did not make it to the final mix, as it were, either as consultant or participant, but I look forward to seeing it. If I remember correctly, the US version has already aired on Discovery.

It is on all this week at 3.45 pm BST, five episodes at 15 minutes each, taking the music for King of Kings, Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ. You can listen again from the link above. Matt asks:

As for the series as a whole, I suspect it is a repeat. Certainly before Mark Goodacre's brief quote he is introduced as being from Birmingham University which would make it at least a year old! If that is the case, it's a very much welcome one.

Well, the clip of me speaking, as well as a lot of the rest of the content, is taken from a BBC Scotland documentary broadcast on Easter Day 2004 and entitled Silverscreen Superstar. I blogged on it briefly at the time (Silverscreen Superstar, 15 April 2004). I didn't know about the new version, so I am interested to see how it pans out and whether they'll be using any more of me in it.